


School Trouble

by everythingmurky



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 10:50:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12529640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingmurky/pseuds/everythingmurky
Summary: Daisy and Chloe enjoy their class, while Ellie seeks help for Tom's problems with his.(Follows Tourist Season, probably won't make much sense without that.)





	School Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> So I was telling myself again I wasn't writing anything big or anything I couldn't control, which is every story, pretty much, and I wanted to write something as my day was absolutely rotten, and my attempts at original fic were... dismal. I thought it was funny and cute, but it wasn't. :( 
> 
> I went back over some of the issues that hang over Tourist Season, and I couldn't resolve all of them, also didn't want to fix one thing as I still think that fix would be horrid, but I thought I'd try for a small piece or two not unlike Not Settled where I looked at little parts of it. This would be a part that follows and continues some thoughts in it but doesn't resolve everything.
> 
> If I were to do a sequel, it's not too far from how I'd start one, though I keep saying I shouldn't as I'm afraid it would be bad and the last one brought out a part of me I'm not proud of and was not good at keeping in check.

* * *

“And that, class, is when I start desperately wishing for my painkillers to kick in and spare me the pain of digging through those old tomes,” Daisy's teacher said, and she tried not to laugh. She knew it wasn't as funny as he pretended. He was still recovering from being tortured by his father, and she knew that could have been her if he hadn't stalled his father and she and Chloe hadn't jumped in the water.

She still had nightmares about it sometimes, and she thought her dad's were worse.

“Okay, again, scheduling this class after lunch was poor thinking on someone's part, but someone should be awake enough to be amused by that.”

“I guess no one wants to take Keith's place,” Chloe said in the chair next to Daisy. “Like... talking back to you will make us turn as psycho as he was or something.”

Kennedy took off his glasses, leaning back in his chair. He seemed to hate that thing, always fidgeting in it, and she thought he'd rather use his rolling desk chair than the one from the hospital he was supposed to stay in while his feet healed.

“Does anyone here really believe that mental illness is contagious?”

Daisy looked at Chloe, who was smiling. Oh, they both knew where this was going, and for some reason, neither of them cared. They were perfectly willing to be assigned a paper when this was all done. Something about that was just wrong, but then Kennedy did usually make things interesting enough to where doing the papers was worth it.

She was glad he'd come back to the school after he got out of the hospital.

“I take it from the silence that either no one does or that they're not willing to admit they do,” Kennedy went on. “Well, unfortunately, that myth is very real and also far more popular than it should be. People don't understand mental illnesses. If you were to talk to just about anyone with a diagnosed condition—anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder—they will probably tell you that at least one person has told them it is 'all in their head' or 'just get over it.' And then we have this unconscious fear that permeates society where being around someone with a mental disorder will make us crazy.”

“People blame your friends for everything, though,” Daisy said. “Like, if you make bad choices, it's that crowd you run with, those blokes you talk to that you shouldn't, that sort of thing. My mum was convinced my mate Anna was a bad influence on me and blamed her for all the trouble we caused.”

Kennedy gave her a small smile. “Having met you and your father, I highly doubt that was the case. You seem very much the instigator.”

Daisy shrugged. “Maybe, but that's what you mean, right? That same idea of our friends getting us to do stupid things is why people think we're all going to catch some mental disease.”

“It's not that we don't influence each other, we all do,” Kennedy said. “The extent of that is dependent on the person. You can live with monsters and become like them... or you can turn away from it. What happens is not just a product of your environment or association. Still, who here gets a bit depressed when their mates are? If your mate is having a bad day, you feel it. Or you're incapable of feeling anything, which is an entirely different disorder and you may be a robot.”

Chloe giggled. “Is that another bit tossed in to make sure we're paying attention?”

“Well, there's still a chance some of you could have been replaced with copies since the last class, but I'm pretty sure that animatronics aren't quite that good yet.” Kennedy said almost all of it with a straight face but smiled at the end, shaking his head. “No, I am curious. You don't have to raise your hand to tell me, but I'd like to see you each do some research into this idea of social contagion. Find at least three sources to support your position—is it possible to catch a mental illness or not?”

“Are we allowed anecdotal evidence?” Daisy asked, and Kennedy frowned at her.

“Anecdotal accounts are probably best left for your introduction,” he began. “Exactly what did you have in mind?”

“The fact that your father's a complete psycho but you're not?” Chloe suggested, and Daisy grimaced. While the thought had crossed her mind, she had been thinking about a case of her father's, one that was not in any way tied to Kennedy.

“I wouldn't go that far,” Kennedy told her. “I'm plenty damaged, and I'm not just talking about my feet. All right. Papers due next class. Have fun. Don't catch any mental illnesses over the weekend.”

* * *

“It's too soon to ask for extensions. You still have the weekend.”

“Some of us work on the weekend, actually,” Ellie began, and Kennedy looked up from his desk, grimacing. She held up a hand. “I know we agreed that you weren't going to have a guard everywhere, or at least not all the time—though I thought you enjoyed having your ex-wife as your teacher's aide there for a bit—and that's not why I'm here.”

Kennedy set down his pen. “I have not had a flashback all day. I suppose I'm due for one.”

Ellie winced. “That's not why I came, either. I am not trying to make you relive anything else.”

“Today would be a better day for it than most, as there's the whole weekend to get myself looking sane again,” Kennedy said, pinching his nose. “Sometimes I think I made a horrible mistake thinking I could take this job again.”

Ellie looked at him with a bit of pity. “Because you're not sure what to do with these idiot teenagers or because you're acting as bait again?”

“Both?” Kennedy suggested, forcing a slight smile. “I know why I stayed, and it was still the right thing to do. I can't let him hurt someone in my place. I just... Half the time, I don't know how I'm even out of bed, why my mind didn't shatter when it all came out... I thought it would. I was afraid of it for so long... And every time I remember something else for you or they search another one of his properties, I find something else to be guilty about, some man I pushed out of my head rather than relive the way he tormented me or someone who is probably dead because of me, because he's obsessed with me... There's this part of me that does shut down, completely, but the rest of me goes on, and I have never understood why.”

“You're stronger than you think.”

He snorted. “None of us believes that.”

She did, but she didn't think he saw that. Some would see his actions as cowardice, others as barely acceptable under the duress he'd endured, but she wasn't as concerned so much with that as the fact that he somehow managed to keep defying his father, even if only in small ways and he faltered often. That man had tried to mold him into something obedient and like him, but he'd never managed it.

“I was hoping you could do a bit of tutoring for my son.”

Kennedy stared at her. “What?”

“Tom's failing his English course. He says it's the teacher, and I can almost see one of them punishing him for what his father's done, but I thought... I don't know. Daisy and Chloe love your classes even when they're groaning over papers they have to write. I thought maybe if he was excited about the stuff he did, he'd do better on his assignments—or you could tell me a teacher's honest opinion of them because I don't see what he did as so wrong, but maybe you would.”

She took the paper out of her purse and handed it to Kennedy. “And yes, I know you're not an expert, only a lawyer turned teacher for a case and sticking with it because you think you need to have that target painted on you, but you know what you'd expect as a teacher. Tell me it's not just a mother's bias.”

“I'm not sure I should,” Kennedy said. “If you do find they're treating him unfairly, do you plan on resolving this with the principal or are you going to take matters into your own hands?”

She folded her arms over her chest. “I'd have expected Hardy to ask me if I planned on kicking the shit out of him if it was true, not you.”

“I didn't, but since you brought it up, do you?”

She shook her head. “If I can control myself when I interview your arsehole of a father, I can control myself with my son's teacher.”

Kennedy nodded, accepting that as he read over the paper. He took out his pen and started scribbling on the margins. He made marks through a couple of words and other punctuation marks as he went along, laughing to himself at the end of Tom's paper.

“Well?”

“What grade did he get?”

“I told you—he failed.”

“What was the assignment?”

Ellie pulled the other sheet from her bag. “Compare and contrast the characters in the novel, their motives and their methods.”

“Ooh, nice and vague... and completely what your son did unless he didn't read the same book as the rest of the class. I'd have marked him down for his word choice and clear lack of proofreading, but the composition itself is decent. Low B, C if I was in a bad mood and the typos annoyed me enough.”

“Bloody hell.”

“What's his current assignment?”

“He almost threw it out, said there was no point in doing it,” Ellie admitted, taking the rumpled paper out of her bag and giving it over. “The one day I try to make things right by getting him from school and instead I get this... he's convinced everyone hates him because of his father, and it doesn't help his only friend is in jail.”

Kennedy nodded. “I'm sure it doesn't. He needs exposure to someone who doesn't judge him that way. I'm not sure who that would be—I don't think I'd recommend most of the students I've got as they're not only older—which isn't necessarily bad—and rather biased in other ways, with Daisy and Chloe being some refreshing exceptions. I swear most of the class was too embarrassed to admit that they see mental illness as contagious.”

“You discussed that?”

“The theory was put forth that no one heckles me now out of fear of becoming as homicidal as Keith is, ridiculous as the idea seems,” Kennedy answered. He took out a new sheet of paper and scrawled a paragraph about the same length as the one on Tom's assignment and passed it to her. “Have Tom answer this question instead. It's within the guidelines, which are again thin... I get the sense this is what he's actually looking for in this paper—or that's what I get reading between the lines—if Tom answers this and not just something as vague as the original prompt, he should be fine. Make sure he spell checks it and proofreads it, and if he wants, he can send it to me to look over. If he does fail after all that... I would say you'd proved that this guy was doing it on purpose.”

“I already did.”

Kennedy shook his head. “One paper with a poor grade that can almost be excused on the typos and failure to address the whole scope of the assignment, no. Two, where he's given a strong directive and outside editing to improve his work and still fails? That's different. Also... suggest to him that he read this book. It's a counterpoint to the one he did the other assignment on, and the insight there into the other side of the matter is utterly invaluable... and quite possibly another reason why Tom failed the assignment. No one bothered to inform him he needed to read the second book or that it even existed.”

“I don't know how you know that.”

“My father, while a sadist, was a man of extreme pretensions. I was allowed to read and punished severely for any failures in my lessons. I'm well-versed, as much as that seems a contradiction with his other behavior toward me. I was supposed to be intelligent, just not to use that intelligence to threaten him in any way.”

Ellie shook her head, sorry she'd said anything. “Right. So... I'll give that to Tom.”

Kennedy nodded. She started for the door, but stopped when he called out to her. “DS Miller?”

She looked back at him. “Yes?”

“My father...”

She flinched. “Still the same. He's still acting like he intends to go through with the plea.”

Kennedy lowered his head. “None of us believe that's going to happen, do we?”

Though she hated to admit it, he was right. His father was stringing them along with this act, pretending to behave and cooperate, accepting his imprisonment with a bit of smugness and too much cheer, and it was impossible to ignore—the bastard was planning something.

Trouble was, none of them knew what it was, not yet.


End file.
